Monster Hunter: World is Capcom's best-selling game ever, sort of

Beats initial release of RE5.

Matt Maguire

Monster Hunter: World is the best-selling game in Capcom's history, the publisher announced today.

A total of 7.5 million units of the game were shipped to retail for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and the game has been played by more than seven million people.

Resident Evil 5 was Capcom's previous best-selling game: it shifted 7.3 million copies on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. However, if you factor in sales of RE5's Gold Edition on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, it would still be above Monster Hunter: World.

Regardless, Monster Hunter: World's numbers are impressive when you consider that is the first game in the franchise to launch on a non-Nintendo console since 2006.

The franchise has always been popular in Japan, but World made it a worldwide phenomenon.

The game's international success shows that "Monster Hunter: World has overcome both linguistic and cultural barriers", said Capcom.

The Monster Hunter series has now sold 48 million units in 14 years.

A PC version of World is coming later this year.

Capcom has said that porting the game to Switch would be "very difficult", but this morning, Iron Galaxy – which handled Skyrim's Switch port – tweeted: "Dear @monsterhunter team at Capcom - we understand that porting the game to Nintendo Switch is challenging, but this is exactly what Iron Galaxy does. Give us a shot & we won’t let you down."